My critique of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book 'More and More and More – An All-Consuming History of Energy' ... 'More and More, and Surprisingly, Less' essaysconcerning.com/2025/06/25/m... #Energysky #Climatesky - ThreadSky

richarderskine.bsky.social • 1 day ago

My critique of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book 'More and More and More – An All-Consuming History of Energy' ...

'More and More, and Surprisingly, Less' https://essaysconcerning.com/2025/06/25/more-and-more-and-surprisingly-less/

#Energysky #Climatesky

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paulbehrens.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thanks for the nice read, you might also be interested in some work we did here on the mining activity required for the transition (we find it’s much less than just coal today) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435123004117

richarderskine.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Thank you and for the link. Apologies if I had not picked up on it and referred to it - the Seaver Wang et al paper seemed to be sufficient but very useful to have corroborating research addressing similar questions. I'll certainly give it a read.

paulbehrens.bsky.social•21 hours ago

Not a problem at all! That’s a great paper. We look at the amount of material needed to be used - the mining activity so it’s a related but different perspective.

elenem.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm grateful for all the thoughtful, data-driven rebuttals I've seen on this. This was an excellent read

richarderskine.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thank you.

hakonnordhagen.bsky.social•1 day ago

Nice analysis!

Say we have this infinite source of clean energy in place (we practically will at some point with pv&wind - as you say), «everything» we use this energy for will put a demand/pressure on natural resources. How to escape yet again ending in situations described by Fressoz?

richarderskine.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Great question. Fressoz doesn't address it! The elipses from Niele quote are "Through all photosynthesis Nature consumes 100 TW". Intuitively I feel queasy of the anthropogenic energy flow exceeds this. Assuming we reach a per capita average of say 2 kW for 10b population, that would be 20 TW

1/2

richarderskine.bsky.social•22 hours ago

BBC's Inside Science had a very interesting discussion addressing your question. Humanity probably has no limits to what it might find uses for abundant energy, but by then the Fressoz category errors and 'degrowth' framing will be even more irrelevant. We'll need a whole new discussion. 2/2

hakonnordhagen.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Thanks for answer and pod suggestion!

I’m not so much worried about the W per person, as the material/natural resource per person when each and one of us gets access to unlimited (close to free) energy.
Perhaps the episode will give some answer :)

thierryaaron.bsky.social•22 hours ago

On unlimited energy use...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01652-6

richarderskine.bsky.social•20 hours ago

Thanks Aaron - unfortunately I’m not a subscriber so cannot access. Can you summarise or share the abstract?

richarderskine.bsky.social•20 hours ago

A lot depends on (a) extent to which the processes involved rely on some material resource that may be (or may become) stressed, such as water, (b) the extent to which communities are enabled to take abundant energy into their own hands. Authoritarians can always find ways to subvert that abundance.

hakonnordhagen.bsky.social•17 hours ago

Just heard the podcast, and the panal seems quite in line with the current «abundance» agenda (of Klein) - perhaps except the «cut all regulations» part. My main worry persist, as the panel, I think, overplay the degree of circularity possible, and how prevent the status quo of horrible inequalities

davidrvetter.bsky.social•1 day ago

A valuable analysis - thank you!

richarderskine.bsky.social•1 day ago

Thank you.

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